There is a binary quality to the Mexican border debate — open or closed? — that not everyone is willing to accept. In an insult to the intelligence of the American people, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas maintains that the southern border is “secure.” And presidential press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insists that the border is “not open.” Really?
Here are some facts for the secretary and the press secretary:
In the last three months of 2022, state and federal authorities encountered 617,000 migrants at the Mexican border. 430,000 were released into the United States as purported asylum seekers.
The remaining 187,000 migrants were expelled under Title 42 as potential COVID health risks. The Supreme Court in February will hear arguments on whether Title 42 should remain in effect while lower courts further examine the issue. Title 42 will likely not survive, as there is no COVID crisis on the border. Many will likely return as purported asylum seekers.
Even more disturbing, in late 2022 there were 204,000 observed “gotaways” — that is, migrants who entered the country and intentionally evaded encounters with authorities.
Multiply these numbers for years or decades and ask yourself whether the unmanaged introduction of tens of millions of people who know little of American history, customs and constitutional values, and who have avoided our established immigration processes, will result in a different America. Did you vote for that?
Moreover, in a perverse collaboration between elements in China and the Mexican drug cartels, fentanyl pours over the Mexican border and results in the lethal poisoning each year of twice the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. Horror stories involving the cartels’ abuse of women and children on the journey to the border are too revolting to recount.
Are you persuaded Secretary Mayorkas? Press secretary Jean-Pierre? Apparently not, as these troubling facts are readily available to both as well as to their boss. Our southern border is wide open. As a result, Americans are dying, communities are overwhelmed, and leaders from Texas and Arizona to New York City, Denver, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are pleading for help.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman’s powerful insight has been borne out: A country cannot at once maintain a modern welfare state and open borders. If it does, the world will beat a path to its door. Surely, a nation that doesn’t take its borders seriously doesn’t take itself seriously.
People who favor an open border fall into several camps:
Various Non-Governmental Organizations and their kindred spirits believe that we should be in the business of welcoming all peoples and that borders are a morally suspect construct. The nobility of this sentiment might be more arresting if those same NGOs were not benefiting from the hard work and charitable nature of American taxpayers, who now must bear the additional burden of a large, growing and needy migrant population that is willfully avoiding legal immigration processes.
Leaders of the Democratic Party believe that they are restocking the pond with future voters via so-called birthright citizenship.
Others believe that because Donald Trump favored a strong border policy, it must be a bad idea. “Orange man bad” has its limitations as a driver of public policy.
Finally, many fundamentally reject our Constitution-based exceptionalism as a needless extravagance that prevents America from doing the things they believe it ought to be doing — like welcoming anyone who wants to come across our southern border.
We annually naturalize one million or so immigrant citizens who enter and remain in our country through legally defined exceptions to our otherwise closed border. Over time, tens of millions of our immigrant forbears have passed citizenship tests because they viewed the United States as a promising, successful and rules-based exception to what they faced in their home countries.
The legal immigration process was managed to meet the needs of our growing economy, and it worked brilliantly as the arrivals and their children have melted together and enriched the American experience.
Now most of our immigration is chaotic, unmanaged and dangerous. A responsible Congress and president would protect this country, as they have sworn to do. I pray they will. With experience as my guide, I fear they will not.
Peter Kalis served for 20 years as chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates LLP. His previous article was “Leaks go off like bombs at the Supreme Court.”
First Published: January 5, 2023, 5:00 a.m.
